(Julia) Scotland the Brave

So, we get in the car and drive up to Scotland. Just because we can.

Eight hours in the car playing incomprehensible version of Twenty Questions, and eating things from M&S. Arrive in Collington, where we are shown some quite incredibly bountiful hospitality from the gorgeous Maceachen family.

Why are maps in Scotland not waterproof? Come to think of it, why did we not print up plastic flyers? By 4pm on our first day there is so much rainwater everywhere that I have to throw my ballet shoes away and buy a pair of boots. Lunch at a cafe called Petit Paris, or similar - delicious. A guitar-playing comedian does impressions of 'women from around the world making love' in between verses of 'Twist and Shout'. Collect Neil and Angus from the station, and then everyone is too cold to go on thrusting damp flyers at Swedish tourists, so we get in a taxi and go home. I go out for supper with my friend Jill, a genius PhD lady; we go to the Nile Valley Cafe, for five kinds of mashed garlic. Later some form of comedy show. I do not sleep much, as is often the case before gigs.

Day of gig dawns more clear and we sound check at 9am. Painless - in fact, perhaps better to sound check at this hour? Like arriving on time for double Chemistry on a Tuesday and feeling smug about it. Venue is church converted into theatre. Sound bounces off the stone. Afterwards, we go on a long expedition to find fried breakfast foods. I go to an exhibition of Scotland and Impressionists, and later see my friend Nick Thomas in his show, NewsRevue, for which I have to run in bare feet across Bristo Square, nearly missing the beginning. It is brilliant.

Dinner in a restaurant near the Roxy; we don't realise there's a special Fawlty Towers show going on and end up eating 'backstage' while Sybil and Basil set fire to Manuel and shout at the diners. I order raspberry sorbet as both appetiser and dessert, for some reason. Exhausted by about 9.30pm, and we end up going onstage close to midnight, but the adrenaline invariably kicks in.

Gig is great. Especially 'The Kitchen', of which I am increasingly fond. (I am planning my own cookery show, which will be about how to provide proper snacks for bands, with complex carbohydrates and balanced proteins, so that they don't go and buy samosas and things with hydrogenated vegetable oils from the shop next to the rehearsal studio.) I stay up until about 6am, which is rare for me - Edinburgh too exciting, too vital, to sleep through.